The Messiah and the Shekinah
by Rhelle
Summary: “You will save the world or destroy it, and perhaps the difference is only a matter of perspective.” (Setsuna encounters the Goddess, the Holy Spirit - the Shekinah - and learns of his true mission, and the meaning of the Messiah.)


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Summary: "You are the Messiah, but whose Messiah shall you be? You will save the world or destroy it, and perhaps the difference is only a matter of perspective." (Setsuna encounters the Goddess, the Holy Spirit - the Shekinah - and learns of his true mission, and the meaning of the Messiah.)

Ancient gods seem to have a way of working themselves into my writing. Isis, Osiris, Anubis, Aphrodite, Lilith, Sedna, and now the Shekinah. Since the Shekinah isn't as well known as the others, perhaps a little background is an order. For the rest of you, just skip over this.

The Shekinah is originally a Jewish term for what would become known as the Holy Spirit - supposedly the sacred Light of God, and the presence that would descend on the righteous. In this fic, however, I make Her more of a force with aspects of other feminine deities - Sophia (Gnostic goddess of wisdom and understanding), Chokmah (the original Jewish version of Sophia), Achamoth (the Gnostic mother goddess), Barbelo (Gnostic term for the sacred feminine), and probably some others that I forgot here (thus why the Shekinah calls Herself by the names of these other deities when Setsuna first meets Her; they are goddesses that I associate with Her, for various reasons).

Yeah, lots of Gnostic influences here (like those in _The Da Vinci Code_), because I am Gnostic myself. If you don't understand something, than just ask it in a review or email. I'll answer you as best I can.

Yep. Well, please enjoy!

The Messiah and the Shekinah

"You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves."

- from "Wild Geese," Mary Oliver

On the night the end of the world began, Setsuna slept, being (for the moment) only a man. And as he slept, he dreamed.

In this dream, there was the Light. Golden Light, soft and strong, that lay in everything like the rays of some eternal sun. Light that took the form of a woman, small and dark, like a million others throughout the history of their race. Yet there was Light that seemed to flow in Her veins.

She spoke. "I am Sophia, Nuet, Achamoth, Shakti, Kami. I am the universe. I am the Creator of the Creator, the one that God prays to. I am the Holy Spirit, the Mirror of God - I am the Shekinah."

"_The_ Shekinah?" Setsuna asked.

"Yes," She replied. "For there is no other. The Wife and the Mother of God."

At the best of times, Setsuna was far from reverential. And this moment, in this world that was no world, was not the best of times.

"Mother_ and_ wife, huh?" he raised an eyebrow.

"It's an allegory. I am the Feminine to His Masculine," the Shekinah rolled Her eyes. "Oh, I'm getting this from a snot-nosed schoolboy who's in love with his _sister_!"

Something in Setsuna's face closed, and his eyes went cold. She had opened the wound again. She had gone where none should go.

And She knew this. "What, do you think God or I care that you are in love with your sister? That this taints you with sin?" She laughed. "There is no sin, Messiah. YHWH is too busy sleeping in His pretty garden to notice, and I am too busy making the seasons turn, and the planets spin round each other, and the lambs run after their mothers. Besides, compared to some of the things YHWH has done, incest seems downright romantic." She gave him a little smile. "If you're going to grovel about your sins, you might as well commit a sin worth groveling about."

"I will taint her," Setsuna's voice was shaking now, and he didn't care. "I will destroy her forever, Sara, my sister."

The Shekinah looked annoyed. "No, you won't, Messiah. She wants you as you want her. This is your blessing, both of you, and this is your curse."

The Shekinah paused for a moment, and smiled in thought. "Ah Sara, most beloved daughter. Well was she named, after Sarah of the Holy Books, Abraham's wife. I see your story in theirs.

"For their love, too, was a cursed one - Sarah was a barren woman, forsaken. Yet Abraham loved her, and took her as his wife, despite the incredulous whispers. They defied the laws of the day - that marriage should be used only to beget children - and they loved each other as they pleased, despite the cruel comments that followed them.

"YHWH spoke through them, the first of His prophets, and in time I too saw their love, and I blessed them for it: I lifted their curse and gave them a son, who was Isaac and whose name all the world knows.

"And they will be remembered forever, Sarah and Abraham, mother and father of those who believe."

Setsuna smiled bitterly, not fully comforted. "Nice story, but I don't think that mine will have such a happy ending. She is, after all, my sister."

The Shekinah shrugged. "Some things we are not given to know, Messiah."

"And why do you keep calling me that?!" There was the edge of anger in his voice.

Her eyes met his, and Setsuna was reminded again that She was not human. The world was in those eyes. "Because that is what you are. You are the Messiah, marked as such before your birth, but whose Messiah shall you be? You will either save the world or destroy it, and perhaps the difference is only a matter of perspective. That is why I have summoned you here."

Setsuna was wry. "Why? To tell me about some past life, like that crazy Angel or the dark-skinned pair?"

"No. My thoughts are purely of the future. Yet even the future is a product of its past." She looked into the darkness, and with a gesture She drew from it light, opened a window to a place that took Setsuna's breath away.

"This," She said, "Is the world that was.

"Before time and space and the many-layered universe, there was a garden. And this garden was Paradise, for Demons and Angels alike. YHWH and I were one then, and all was in harmony.

"But then YHWH invented His law, and the sin that was the consequence of that law. Darkness and light were born, good and evil, turning Angel against Demon and creating hatred where once there had been peace. YHWH and I, too, quarreled viciously and divided forever, and history itself echoes the consequences of that division."

The window to the past closed, and Setsuna found himself looking into Her eyes again. She continued. "Yet there are those who, by their life and strength and sacrifice, can heal that breach for a time, restore the balance, and draw together in peace Heaven, Hell, and Earth. These we call _Messiahs_.

"You are one of these, a Messiah, the last and the greatest. In the end, the fate of all existence rests with you. Whether you will bring paradise to earth and restore the world that was, or destroy all the created cosmos with its many fractured realms, it is your choice. It is all in your hands, Setsuna."

For the first time in Her presence, Setsuna found himself afraid. "You're the Shekinah. Why can't you do this yourself?"

"YHWH and I may hold the world and all the living in our hands, but it is the mortals who write the destiny of both divine and human. Sometimes, it is a human who must redeem us all. And you are, after all, only a man who is sometimes an Angel."

He found himself shaking again. "I can't do this. I'm no Messiah, and I don't want to be one!"

She gave a bitter laugh. "Does any Messiah want to be a Messiah? Did Moishe, living in Pharaoh's palace on the Nile, want to defy the ones who had raised him and lead the Israelites out of Egypt? Did Yeshua ben Yosef, a simple carpenter in Nazareth, want to wander the land and die crucified to show people The Way? Did Mohammed, as a rich merchant in Mecca, want to give his life to Allah? Did Siddartha the prince of India want to abandon the richness of his life in his search for enlightenment?

"No. None of them wanted to. But they had no choice. To ease suffering, sometimes we ourselves must suffer. As even I have done, many different times in many different guises.

"And anyway," She said with a shrug. "It isn't as if this hasn't happened before. You are only one of many Messiahs in one of many worlds. There have been a thousand universes born from me, and a thousand universes destroyed. This will only be one more."

"Thanks," Setsuna said dryly. "Is this supposed to reassure me, or defeat me before this ever really begins?"

"Take your pick. Again, it's only a matter of perspective.

"But it is your choice, Setsuna, because of all the gifts YHWH and I bestowed upon our children, freedom of choice is the best and greatest.

"So if you destroy the world, I will make another, and give life another chance. Even if there is no God, there will be the Shekinah. But I hope - as indeed we all hope - that you will purify this tainted world, make it clean again. And I hope you will remind its inhabitants, because they forget, that both Heaven and Hell are part of the Tree of Life, and Demons and Angels alike are the children of the Shekinah."

Setsuna finished for Her. "And perhaps they will remember that human and animal, Angel and Demon, God and Goddess, are all part of the eternal One."

She laughed, deep and clear. "You never cease to surprise me. And you remember too, Setsuna Mudo," She was smiling; "That it is in damnation that salvation lies."

Then She let him go. The riptide of the dream released him, back into the simple darkness of sleep, darkness where there was no Light. He cried out, and She answered him with gentle laughter - and a prayer that followed him down into oblivion…

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O grant that I may  
not so much seek to be consoled as to console;  
to be understood as to understand;  
To be loved as to love  
For it is in giving that we receive -  
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned.  
And it's in dying that we are born to eternal life.  
**Amen.**

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FINIS

Notes:

- The prayer at the end is part of "The Prayer of Saint Francis," who, for being a Catholic, was actually pretty cool.

- I stuck the whole connection with the Abraham and Sarah story in here because if you really think about it, a lot of the themes in their romance are similar to the ones in the Setsuna and Sara romance; forbidden love, the idea of a couple being chosen by God and yet cursed.

- Maybe I made Setsuna a little OOC, but I just love WiseAss!Setsuna XP What can I say? He's fun.

- The "there is no sin" has a lot to do with the Gnostics (in _The Gospel of Mary Magdalene_, Jesus explicitly states that there is no sin but what we imagine to be sin), but it's also mentioned in Paul's letters, which are Biblical canon.

- For those who don't know, "Moishe" is the original Hebrew name for Moses, and "Yeshua" is the original name for Jesus. Because I'm a geek and I know all these things :::sweat drop:::

- Yup, I had fun with the Buddhist idea that there are many consecutive universes, one created after another. Just the idea makes you dizzy, doesn't it?

You want to know the real reason why I wrote this story? Because I wanted someone to tell Setsuna to shut the hell up angsting over his sister XD I've only read the first three manga, but he's always whining about how baaaaaaad it is that he loves her, and how wroooooooong he feels. Angsting about the romance is more obnoxious than the actual romance. I'm sick of it.

Also, I kinda wanted something with the feminine half of creation. Plus, the Shekinah was bugging me. What can I say? :::crazy Gnostic:::

Well, if you haven't been scared off yet, please review! I'd love to know your thoughts.


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